Carry On Wayward Son
by StitchAndRepair
Summary: He was Dean Winchester and he was the best damn hunter there ever was.


First was Amanda, who he met when he was in high school, looking after Sammy. He liked her. She was flirty and fun and kissed him with just the right amount of tongue. She was the kind of girl he had always wanted - good and suburban and innocent; naive in all the right ways. She let him kiss her between classes and sometimes even cup her chest if the halls were empty enough. He tried to convince her to break curfew and go one step further with him, but she never did. He secretly liked that she never did.  
She caught him with another girl and the smile that was always on her face turned dark and pitying and he made himself look away. She told him everything that he already knew about himself, every truth and insecurity that he had swallowed down and hid behind his mask of sarcasm and cheap jokes.

He knew it wasn't love, but it hurt just as much.

He was 21 and only supposed to stay in town for a week. He met Rachel and ended up staying for almost two months. She sang along to Nirvana and ACDC as she cooked bacon and eggs and she beat him at poker every time they played. She had a tattoo along the line of her collarbone that he traced with his tongue every chance he got. _So it goes. _Her favorite Vonnegut quote. She stayed up with him on the nights when the darkness consumed him and the nightmares were too much and she'd read to him - Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast Of Champion and Mother Night. He slept soundly, washed into unconsciousness by the soft husk of her voice. She never asked questions. She explored every inch of his body in ways that he'd previously found too intimate; he came undone every night under the feel of her tongue and the warmth of her hands and every single night she would piece him back together, cell by cell, stitching him up and fixing him and making him whole - at least until the sun rose, harsh and bright in the morning sky.

He thought it was love. She promised him it wasn't.

He was twenty two when he met Cassie. She was fierce and funny and made him feel more than he'd felt in a long time. She was strong and pretty and came from a good family - respectable and upstanding. He was young and on his own and he had trusted her. Trusted her enough to reveal every inch of himself, every dark, dusty corner, every secret. She called him crazy and threw him out and told him to never come back.

He did go back. Years later she called him, needed him. Apologized for their past and made it up with her body and her tongue and poured into him all the feelings he had long made himself forget.

It was something close to love. It had burned out before he left for the second time.

The RoadHouse became Dean's favorite pit stop. He and Sammy found themselves making up excuses just to go back and visit. Jo called him a dick and shot pool better than he ever could. She called 'bullshit' every time he spoke it and kissed him, a simple peck, whenever he needed it. She played with guns better than him and challenged him in every way he needed. She was fierce and brave and beautiful. She had so much heart and she was nurturing. She reminded him of his mother.

It could've been love. It never got the chance to be.

His first time around with Lisa was all passion and new experiences and positions and the best sex he had ever had. The second time around she was different. She had a son and responsibilities and was even more beautiful than he ever remembered her being. She told him off for not making the bed and for tracking mud into the carpet, she slapped his hand away from the pan when he tried to taste the food before it was ready and she had grown up to hate his taste in music. She cleaned up his cuts and left the lamp on at night so that the darkness wouldn't get him. She made him wear fitted shirts and attend parties and socialize. She made him sit at the table and eat dinners with her and Ben and he had to pretend that it was normal and that he was used to it. And every night she would kiss him with her hand cupped around the back of his neck and her fingers in the short strands of his hair. And every night he would breathe her in, inhale until his lungs were full and he would smile and tell himself, remind himself, that this was real and this was his life now.

He thought it was love. He knew it was.

When it ended it hurt enough that it had to be.

The next girl was the same night that Lisa and Ben forgot all their memories of him, that he ever even existed. They wouldn't remember that it was him that taught Ben how to fix up a car. They wouldn't remember the same mixtapes he played on repeat and hummed too noisily around the house. They wouldn't remember him. He needed to forget too. Just for a night. The hurt would still be there in the morning. The next girl was cute; blonde and cheeky and everything that Lisa wasn't. She played hard to get and he chased her because she wanted it.

Girls came and went, fewer and further between. Between monsters and demons and Lucifer and the King of Hell, he met Roxanne. She kissed him, bit at his lips until they were swollen and sore. She swore like a sailor and told him that he mattered. She almost made him believe it.

Siouxsie spent two nights with him, spent his birthday with him. He didn't tell her it was and she never found out, but she lay with him anyway, spent hours talking to him when he didn't feel like talking himself. She made him laugh. He missed her sometimes.

He spent a week in town recovering after a close call with a Wendigo and an even closer call with a demon. Lucy cleaned his cuts and traced her fingers along his body, his scars and his bruises. She fit her hand over the handprint on his shoulder and pretended to believe the story of how he got the strange tattoo after his retreat to an old tribe in a jungle somewhere. Her hand didn't fit.

After them came Louise and Rebecca and Jamie. Savannah and Georgie and Lana. Lexii and Kasey and Nicki.

All those different woman, all those chances of love.

He knew it wasn't love. He no longer wanted it to be.

Somewhere along the way, as the girls became less and less until there were practically none, Dean found himself thinking about the other kinds of love and all the people around him.

There was Castiel. Castiel came into Dean's life screeching and shattering and scary and Dean hadn't wanted it, had stabbed him and cursed him and tried to force him to leave. But he didn't.

And as it turned out, Castiel was someone who believed in Dean more than anyone ever did. Cas was the man with invisible wings who didn't know how to be human. Who stumbled and fell, picked himself up and learnt how to be, all for him. All for Dean. He saved Dean in all the ways a man can be saved, plus a thousand ways more. He had too much heart and saw all the things that Dean couldn't.

Castiel showed Dean an entire new world.

It was strange and scary and new, Dean couldn't really explain it, but it grew to be love.

There was Bobby, who was gruff and rude and far too intelligent. He drank too much and cursed even more. He cuffed Dean round the head with one hand while patting him on the back with the other. He taught Dean how to be his very best and gave him a place to lay his head. He had always been in Dean's life and stepped up when Dean hadn't realized he even needed it. He reined him in and let him go whenever it was called for and he forgave Dean for his mistakes without batting an eyelid.

It was a fatherly kind of love and Dean treasured it, even more after it was gone.

Then there was Sam, the little brother who never needed an explanation.

And Charlie, who was someone he never knew he wanted, needed, until she stumbled into his life and taught him that it was okay to have fun once in a while.

Last of all there was him. It was the person he was only just starting to love. It was new and unstable, a foundation that would never be solid. But it was building daily, surrounded by the few people he had left. He didn't know where it had sprung from or how long it would stay, but it was there. He was the boy who had raised his younger brother, shown him how to be a better man than he himself ever could be. He was the soldier who had kept his upper lip as stiff as it could go and obeyed his father's every rule until he branched out and made new rules for himself. He was a believer in good and bad and had learnt that sometimes the lines between the two are blurred. He has an angel, a little sister, a father figure and a brother. He is Dean Winchester and he is the best damn hunter there ever was. He has felt love and has loved in return.

They were all different kinds of love and the only kinds he'd ever really needed.


End file.
